New v9 user questions

[cobrien]

Hello,

I've just jumped from FZ v6.5 to v9 & I have a bunch of questions I'm hoping people can help me with.

While v9 opens my v6.5 files all of the texture mapping has been lost. All the textures are in the materials palette but not mapped to anything anymore. Is there any way to open these files & retain the mapping? A large part of my work involves updated previous jobs & this is a bit of a nightmare.

 

How do I go about mapping multiple images/textures to different sides of an object? I've been playing around with the 'Map Texture Classic' tool but I can't get it to work. I can't even get it to maintain the aspect ratio of the image I want to use, it just repeats the image around the whole object. Am I using the wrong tool?

 

I now have V-Ray (was using Renderzone) & while I've just started playing around with it a couple of things have jumped out at me.

- How do you set up a bunch of views to render? In v6.5 I would have just gone File/New Imager Set & selected the file(s) & views I wanted to render. So I could render a few different jobs overnight, is there a similar way to do it in v9 with V-Ray?

- Can you render with a transparent background in V-Ray?

- Does anyone have any tips on reducing render times? For example, in Renderzone I often dropped the shadow resolution in the light parameters down from 1 to 0.5 to speed things up but I can't find that option in v-ray.

 

Any help greatly appreciated.

[Des]

You won't regret the move. It's been so long since I used v6.5 I can't really remember all the differences but you should get to know how the pick options work.

If you have Auto Pick selected (I do all the time), hold down the commend key while hovering over your object. This allows topological selection, this is necessary for the texturing as per your query. So to texture different materials on different faces, select your material, select the paint tool, command click on the faces you want. If you want to have different scalings of the materials on the same object, use the edit texture tool and command click the face you want to set the size to. I sometimes use the Map texture tool with the mapping type set to "Best Match Per Face" selected. Then I can use the Edit texture tool to select each face to set the parameters.

I usually switch back and forth between "Edit On Face"" and "Edit in 3d" in the Edit Texture Map tool options depending on what I'm doing.

I'm sure others here will help with their suggestions with this and with your vray queries.

 

Des

Edited December 17, 2020 by Des

[Andrew West]

Oh boy,  where to begin.  It is going to be hard for you to learn the new modeling and texturing without going through the tutorial videos.  However, for starters let me give you a few pointers.  As you probably have noticed the new method of texturing is in shaded mode using a few different tools that replaced the old 6.7 mapping tool.  When you create any geometry the program automatically assigns a mapping method to it.  Personally I hate this as it almost always creates the wrong mapping for my purposes (which are architectural).  So what I do is to first use the Map Texture tool set to cubic in order to clear the assigned mapping.  Then I go to the EditTexture tool to move, scale, rotate, etc.  As Des said, to assign a different material to a face you just hold down the control key to highlight it.  Then you can also drag and drop the material onto that face or object.  I have found that the Copy Texture tool which worked wonderfully in 6.7 is now a bit of a pain.  If you use it be sure to clear the default mapping from your object with the MapTexture tool first.  Otherwise you will get strange results.  Lastly, one of the best features of v9 is your ability to isolate an object to work on it in real time.  Just right click on that object to isolate it or reveal everything back.  Makes mapping much easier.  

One thing to keep in mind is the addition of the Inspector Palette.  It is important in the new methodology.  You will find it under the pick tool.  It has the attributes of your object and all relevant info which you can change.  It pops open with the Basic tab but if you click on that you will find other attributes associated with your object.  The palette itself is a little buggy so if you are finding that the program is glitchy close it down.  

As for multiple views you now have a Scene palette which will store everything from each view (sun, lights, camera, etc.).  Be aware that if you click to add a new scene the program starts recording as highlighted by a red dot next to your scene.  If you change views or lights that will be recorded.  So set your scene exactly as you want it, add a scene entry and then immediately click on the red dot to stop recording.  Kind of a strange method to say the least.  

I have not found a way to run the imager on multiple V-ray scenes yet.  Perhaps others could help on that one.  However, I find that V-ray is so much faster than Renderzone that I rarely need to let things run overnight.  There is also an Autosave feature in V-ray in the V-ray Settings palette which you should explore fully. That is where you can find all your performance features to speed things up or adjust quality.  There are many youtube videos showing various methods of using Vray and most are very similar to using it in Form.z.  Transparent backgrounds are easy in VR and you should examine the Environment (for background) and Render Elements tabs to see how they work.  Probably the single best feature in V-ray settings is under the Render Elements.  It is called ID Management and you get it by clicking on that tiny down arrow next to it.  There you can assign a unique material color ID to each material in your project. Be sure to  put a check next to the  Material ID channel in Render Elements.  After you complete your v-ray render you can save each channel independently to work on them separately.  By doing this you can easily isolate any material in your scene Post Process in Photoshop and work on it without re rendering the scene.  Example:  I render out my scene with a Reflection Channel, an Alpha channel, a Material ID channel, a Depth channel, and a Reflection Glossiness channel.  Then I load each channel into my PS file to work on each.  One other thing to note is that by selecting Use GPU you will get faster render times, especially if you have a good card.  The scene will look slightly different than a scene rendered using your CPU.  Selecting Denoiser will speed things up considerably as well.   You can stop your render any time you think it looks okay and the Denoiser smooths out imperfections.  

Well that is a start.  Good luck.

[Justin Montoya]

If the file opens without textures showing in Shaded view but are showing in the Material Manager, and you were using RenderZone, then I would try running a RenderZone render and see if the textures show up in a rendering.  If they do, you are in luck.  After rendering, simply Save the file As a new file and close FormZ.  Next time you open, the textures should be there in Shaded mode now as well.  This has been a trick we've used for missing files since I started using FormZ in v5.  I'm not sure why it happens, or why it's still necessary, but that's what I do if it 'looks' like textures are missing in Shaded view but show up in RenderZone.

[Justin Montoya]

Like the others said, on texture mapping, it is actually even easier now without the classic window from v6 once you get a hang of it.  Using Shaded mode the new Interactive mapping is really easy with the 3 tools, Paint, Map Texture, and Edit Texture map.  I use these constantly, so I made them permanent places on my tool side bar, as I think digging for them is a bit silly of a default UI choice.  I wish these were combined into 1 or 2 tools, as having to pick them individually to perform a single operation is not as intuitive as it could be.  

 

 

[cobrien]

Thanks for taking the time everyone, a lot to work through. That's my Christmas taken care of.

[cobrien]

4 hours ago, Justin Montoya said:

If the file opens without textures showing in Shaded view but are showing in the Material Manager, and you were using RenderZone, then I would try running a RenderZone render and see if the textures show up in a rendering.  If they do, you are in luck.  After rendering, simply Save the file As a new file and close FormZ.  Next time you open, the textures should be there in Shaded mode now as well.  This has been a trick we've used for missing files since I started using FormZ in v5.  I'm not sure why it happens, or why it's still necessary, but that's what I do if it 'looks' like textures are missing in Shaded view but show up in RenderZone.

Hi Justin,
That almost works for me, textures don't show up in Shaded but do in RenderZone. If I change view & use RenderZone again everything turns black? Textures never show up in V-Ray

[cobrien]

4 hours ago, Justin Montoya said:

If the file opens without textures showing in Shaded view but are showing in the Material Manager, and you were using RenderZone, then I would try running a RenderZone render and see if the textures show up in a rendering.  If they do, you are in luck.  After rendering, simply Save the file As a new file and close FormZ.  Next time you open, the textures should be there in Shaded mode now as well.  This has been a trick we've used for missing files since I started using FormZ in v5.  I'm not sure why it happens, or why it's still necessary, but that's what I do if it 'looks' like textures are missing in Shaded view but show up in RenderZone.

Hi Justin,
That almost works for me, textures don't show up in Shaded but do in RenderZone. If I change view & use RenderZone again everything turns black? Textures never show up in V-Ray

[Andrew West]

  I just opened a 6.7 file from 1998 in version 9 and I immediately get a warning that shows a list of missing textures.  At the bottom of the window you have a tab to relink and to recreate them.  Recreate will not work very well so you have to relink them.   If you keep all your textures in a single location the program will automatically find the other textures in that folder.  For instance, I had 4 different masonry textures and once I linked one of them all the other masonry textures were linked.   I had to go to four different folders to get my 30 or so texture maps in. Then my model displayed the correct maps all properly aligned and they rendered perfectly in V-ray.   Check your file search paths under your preferences as well.  Then things might work better. You will have to exercise a lot of patience while you transition over to 9 but it is worth it in so many ways.  FYI converting my model over took about 15 min.  

 

[DennisA]

You can try if going from 6.5 to 8.6 then to 9 & see if that helps?